Research published in the Medical Journal of Australia shows that Aboriginal children are particularly susceptible to lung disease.

Twenty-five per cent of 78 Aboriginal children aged between two months and 13 years receiving follow-up care for pneumonia in Alice Springs hospital were found to have a treatable chronic respiratory illness.

Associate Professor Anne Chang from the Royal Children's Hospital in Brisbane says if all Indigenous children were checked for lung disease their morbidity rate would be much higher.

"It is no good just diagnosing it, you have to diagnose it and then manage it, so you know it is a matter of treating things earlier just like any other illness.

"If you manage to treat things earlier or define it earlier, there is more chance of doing things for the child and for the adult with a certain chronic condition," she said.